Public Sphere

The public sphere describes a space of reasoned debate about politics and the state. The public sphere is the arena of political participation in which ideas, alternatives, opinions, and other forms of discourse take shape. We can recall the ideas of John Stuart Mill in On Liberty to think of the public sphere as the space in which persons come to join a contest over true, partially true, and wrong ideas about how the state and politics should address the major issues of the day. Along with debate, the public sphere also encompasses the arena of political action, by both individuals and groups. In modern democracy, the public sphere is, in particular, the arena of social movement activity, as collective action seeks to bring issues ...